THE increasing unpredictability of the weather is just another spanner in the works for trainers attempting to navigate the craziness that is their world.
Just five days after the conclusion of Irish Champions Festival, Ado McGuinness is still smarting at the recollection of the heavens opening at Curragh Racecourse in plenty time to make the ground a little more testing for the Al Basti Equiworld, Dubai Flying Five Stakes. Meanwhile, Go Athletico was munching away on some hay in his box at Skylark Stables.
“On the Tuesday, with the forecast, it was going to be fast ground so I took him out of the Group 1 at the forfeit stage,” McGuinness regales. “On the day it rains and I was kicking myself. It was unbelievable. You wouldn’t have wanted to be around my place on Sunday evening. The swear box would’ve been full, that’s for sure!”
He’s laughing now because there’s no point crying but watching Moss Tucker sprint to glory was tough to stomach. Ken Condon’s star is another lover of give in the ground, a horse Go Athletico has been very closely matched with on two previous clashes at group level. But what can you do? Twenty nine degrees one week, apocalyptic rain the next. You just have to hope the ball bounces for you a fair amount of times and then that the horses are in nick to capitalise.
And few give as much bang for their buck as the McGuinness representatives and at a variety of grades and categories too. He’s a hard man to categorise because he is forever broadening his horizons, just lately being the Irish saviour in the Racing League, which he enjoyed immensely.
He is, of course, a Group 1 winner with the potential to adding to his elite tally before the year is out.
Buying horses in training is his metier but again, this season, he has produced three highly talented juveniles. And whether he will have any of them in 2024 is indicative of the other side of the business – selling to grease the wheels.
Having that global market to do that is why he moved to flat racing from his early success over jumps with Victram, Beau Michael and Pivot Bridge. The Hayestown conditioner is still looking to grow his operation, just outside Lusk, particularly in quality but he will never turn his back on the bread and butter.
“You never forget the hand that fed you. The biggest problem with the low-grade handicappers, they’re the hardest horses to train in the world because you do not know when you’re gonna run. You can’t plan rightly that day you’re going to get the run bar you’ve been placed the last time you’ve run, and you have to have them on the top of their game every day they go out. And if you’ve only three or four pound in hand, and all of a sudden you’re drawn wide on the outside, you’re gone!
“The one thing I will say about them, is they’re great to attract people to the races. You go to Dundalk on a Friday night during the winter, which I will do flat out as it keeps the staff busy through to March, you go into the ring for a 45-65 or a 45-70, you’ll have 10 lads that fancy their horses there that night. The bookies love them because there’s plenty of money.
“Don’t get me wrong, we all need big owners, but they don’t go in the gates and spend. These guys keep Dundalk afloat on Friday nights. You go upstairs and see them having a meal and a few drinks. It’s great and it’s important. Those people and those horses are very important.
“It was great to go on Saturday and Sunday (for Irish Champions Festival) to watch the calibre of horse running them races but there’s only a certain amount of them horses that’s around. We are a country of sellers too, and a lot of ordinary fellas have to sell.”
Dispersal
Even when McGuinness found a Group 1 horse, buying A Case Of You from John McConnell and enjoying top-flight success in the Prix de l’Abbaye and Al Quoz Sprint at ParisLongchamp and Meydan respectively, economic realities meant that the five-year-old son of Hot Streak was sold to race in Australia this year.
With the dispersal of an increasing calibre of stock, McGuinness has a little more to invest in horses with slightly better pedigrees and form, and maybe fewer physical or mental issues. It is all relative, of course, when you’re taking on blue blood progeny of Frankel, Siyouni, Dubawi, Sea The Stars, Lope De Vega et al.
“It’s all what you can afford to spend every year. If you haven’t got the budget, you need the owners to spend the money. We can all get lucky, buy something cheap and it turns into a superstar and that’s the dream. You see rags-to-riches type of horses around but if I go to the yearling sales next week and I buy five or ten ten-grand horses, the chances are most of them are going to be no good. They’re that price for a reason.
“Now one lad could go in and buy one five-grand horse and get very lucky but that’s like playing the lottery, and how many times do you win the lottery? And the game is getting so competitive in this country for two-year-olds. We’ve the biggest breeding operation in the world that works out of this country and we’ve the best trainer of the world.
“My dream is having A Case Of You. Would I love having five more of them? Yes, I would and I would strive for that but there’s dreaming and being realistic and surviving. We have to make the whole system work and if you win a hundred grand in Ireland for a year, you get less than eight grand and you pay tax out of that, you’ve less than five grand and it’s hard to win a hundred grand in Ireland. So prize money won’t keep a trainer afloat; you have to survive by trying to sell.
“Now you’d love to sell them to keep them in the yard but there’s a great market abroad. We sold a smart two-year-old from a barrier trial in Dundalk just last week. The owner is making seven times what he paid for the horse and if he ran two times and it didn’t work out, he loses money. So now he’ll go back in and buy one and maybe two.”
Ronan Whelan, Ado McGuinness and Stephen Thorne
Breeze-up
The breeze-ups have been good for McGuinness and Shamrock Thoroughbreds, the highly successful syndicate established by his cousin and assistant, Stephen Thorne, even though their most expensive purchase didn’t make the grade at all. Three have worked out very well though. Perfect Judgement was second first time in a maiden and has been placed twice since. That’s a little frustrating but it goes back to the level of opposition.
“Willie McCreery won the Group 2 Debutante with a maiden (Vespertilio) and Paddy Twomey won a Group 3 (the Round Tower Stakes) with another maiden (Letsbefrankaboutit). And that was an expensive breeze-up horse but he was only third first-time out although I know the draw killed him that day.”
Tiger Belle came from Con Marnane’s Bansha House draft and there are big plans for the Cotai Glory filly. She won at listed level at Naas before bagging a Group 3 prize at ParisLongchamp at the end of August.
“Con recommended her to us and said she was very fast. She’s really developed now. She was light then but she looked really, really sharp and racy and she was worth taking a punt on. She breezed quite fast so that’s why we bought her.
“We probably would have had her sold if she was a little bit bigger but she’s actually grown a good bit. She won her maiden, they knocked her on her height but she’s a big engine in there and that’s what counts.
Tiger Belle
“She’s valuable now and she’s heading to the Breeders’ Cup. We’ll run her in the five-furlong fillies’ race on the Friday night. If she got a low draw over there, and it’s a downhill finish, believe you me, she’ll take catching. If she gets out and gets the rail, they’ll have to go fast to try beat her. It would be a great experience for the lads involved. We’ve had a couple of offers in, nothing massive and she’ll go to the sales at the end of the year if she’s not sold in America.”
McGuinness loves the enjoyment owners get from these experiences. He refers to the likes of Ricky Delaney of The Harold House and the bunch of lads that frequent the well-known Dublin pub that came in on the Shamrock Thoroughbreds acquisition. And former senior flat handicapper, Ciaran Kenneally.
“He’s travelled all over the word in horse racing and he said to me, ‘The thrill I got in Paris Ado, you don’t realise it.’ And to go to the Breeders’ Cup, it’ll cost a few quid to go but these guys are living a dream and you’re going to have a whack at it and there’s a huge pot of money at the end of it. Even in the top four or five, expenses would be covered.”
Rush Queen is a dual winner that has finished third at listed level.
“She’s just improved with every run. I really liked her at the start but she’s so genuine, and we’ve got blacktype with her, which is always the aim with fillies at the start of the year. There’s not much between the two of them when you work them. She’s a smashing filly and she’ll probably be sold before the year is out.”
On the doss
You cannot talk to McGuinness without referencing the old reliables that run so often and get their one or two days in the sun. Tuesday’s Listowel winner Spanish Tenor has nearly been on the doss compared to many of them, winning twice from 11 runs. Hightimeyouwon is 3-12. Distillate 2-15, Zig Zag Zyggy 1-15. Skontonovski has raced 18 times this year, getting his head in front once. To keep that many horses sound enough to race that often is no mean feat.
“All them horses have HGV licences – they drive themselves,” McGuinness says with a laugh.
“The beach is probably a huge factor. I don’t train every day there but we can take the likes of them horses to the beach and it’s a huge factor. The likes of the Saltonstalls (11 runs), those older horses, it’s a great help. We target the bigger races with them, though we’ve just had a good few near-misses this year but you need them horses because they win money, they keep your name in lights.
“But we’re finding it difficult to get to buy them at the sales at the moment as the Middle East market is really driving prices up to the roof. I spoke to a high profile trainer in England this week and he said to me he’s in exactly the same position. He’s struggling to get them. The Saudi, Qatari and Australian market is massive and it’s good for racing – we sold a nice horse, Whisky On The Hill that won three nice handicaps to Australia during the summer – but it just makes it harder to buy them.”
Stephen Thorne, his assistant, has been a central facet in the acquisition side, having established Shamrock to help drive it.
“He works hard at the sales to try to find these horses. They don’t all work out but you have to buy them. I’ve often had half-a-million yearlings in my yard that might have cost only 15 or 20 grand but we buy them because we try and stay in the market that we can afford.”
Go Athletico is owned in partnership by Team Valor and Shamrock, having been bought for €165,000 after winning at listed level under the indefatigable Gerard Mosse at Deauville for Andreas Schütz in April. The five-year-old scored at listed level in Cork on his first outing for new connections in June before finishing second to Art Power in the Group 2 Barberstown Castle Sapphire Stakes, just ahead of Moss Tucker, who then turned the tables when they filled the first two places in the Group 3 Rathasker Stud Phoenix Sprint Stakes.
“We beat Ken’s horse once this year, he beat us another time. We were very close to him. This horse only ran three times for us, so we’re just really starting to get to know him.
Paris target
“He goes to the Abbaye on Arc day. He’s flying. I’m delighted with him. He actually worked last Monday up at the Curragh. Ronan (Whelan) got off him and said, ‘You should have ran this lad yesterday.’ I won’t tell you what I told him!
“He’ll get the ground in Paris but that’s only one thing there. The draw is massive. If you get a high draw in Paris, you’re better off going back into town and enjoying yourself because it’s very hard to win out there. The stats don’t lie.
“It’s the same with the two-year-olds. We had Tiger Belle in the Abbaye as well but two two-year-olds have won it in the last 40 years and I know some don’t try, but I’m a firm believer in letting these horses take their own age group on.”
Rush Queen and Cian MacRedmond won at Naas in August for owners Shamrock Thoroughbreds
He hails the role of his “great team” but admits that attracting young locals is almost impossible, while the “extortionary money” being charged for accommodation in Dublin is a big problem for him in attracting staff. The difficulty in securing visas for people getting in touch from the likes of India and Pakistan looking to work for him is another significant hurdle.
But the ambition is obvious. A new barn is being built now that would, if filled, double his capacity to around 100, not that he’s actively looking to reach that number. But he doesn’t want to have to turn a good one away.
“Everyone knows in this game, you can’t take your foot off the throttle. It’s always spend, spend, spend, whether it’s upgrading facilities or the horses. It’s a full-on job and you just have to keep going. There’s always someone there biting at your heels. And this country is harder again. If you survive in this country racing, you’ll survive in most countries in the world, that’s for sure.
“We need more capital all the time to buy more horses. The more horses you buy, the nicer horses you buy, the better chance you have of getting racehorses. That’s our aim, to try gather new people in that will spend some nice money on nice horses. We don’t do many owner-breeders and I’d love to get a few of them on board. It would be a huge factor as a lot of them would be breeding nice horses and keeping the fillies.
“But we will never forget the guys at the other end of the scale either that are our core, helped us get this far and really are a major part in keeping the show on the road. You’re always trying to build and that’s what we’ll continue to do.”